{"id":313579,"date":"2019-12-06T06:06:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T20:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=313579"},"modified":"2019-12-06T06:06:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T20:06:20","slug":"death-toll-in-samoa-measles-epidemic-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/death-toll-in-samoa-measles-epidemic-62\/","title":{"rendered":"Death toll in Samoa measles epidemic: 62"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this image from video, a red flags hangs outside homes of residents who have not been vaccinated in Apia, Samoa, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019.\u00a0(AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)\u2014Samoa\u2019s main streets were eerily quiet on Thursday as the government stepped up efforts to curb a measles epidemic that has killed 62 people.<\/p>\n

The government told most public and private workers to stay home on Thursday and Friday and shut down roads to nonessential vehicles as teams began going door-to-door to administer vaccines.<\/p>\n

Families in the Pacific island nation were asked to hang red flags from their houses if they needed to be vaccinated.<\/p>\n

Most of those who have died from the virus are young, with 54 deaths among children aged 4 or younger.<\/p>\n

The Samoa Observer newspaper said the normally bustling capital Apia was a ghost town on Thursday, with only birds nesting in the rooftops and stray dogs roaming the streets.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi told reporters the vaccine drive was unprecedented in the nation\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

He said one challenge was that a lot of people hadn\u2019t considered that measles could be deadly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey seem to take a kind of lackadaisical attitude to all the warnings that we had issued through the television and also through the radio,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another challenge, he said, was that others had been seeking help from traditional healers, who had been successfully treating tropical diseases in Samoa for some 4,000 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome of our people pay a visit to traditional healers thinking that measles is a typical tropical disease, which it is not,\u201d the prime minister said. <\/p>\n

Samoan authorities believe the virus was first spread by a traveler from New Zealand.<\/p>\n

The nation declared a national emergency last month and mandated that all 200,000 people get vaccinated. The government has also closed all schools and banned children from public gatherings.<\/p>\n

According to the government, more than 4,000 people have contracted the disease since the outbreak began and 172 people remain in hospitals, including 19 children in critical condition.<\/p>\n

Figures from the World Health Organization and UNICEF indicate that fewer than 30% of Samoan infants were immunized last year. That low rate was exacerbated by a medical mishap that killed two babies who were administered a vaccine that had been incorrectly mixed, causing wider delays and distrust in the vaccination program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)\u2014Samoa\u2019s main streets were eerily quiet on Thursday as the government stepped…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}